EUGENE, Oregon — Oregon’s record may still be perfect after two weeks of the college football season, but it doesn’t take a magnifying glass to see that the team that began the year ranked third in the country has shown several blemishes.
Struggling to beat an unranked opponent for the second week in a row, the Ducks were able to find a way to win again Saturday, outlasting a tough Boise State team 37-34 thanks to Atticus Sappington’s last-second, game-winning field goal.
The result left coach Dan Lanning with mixed emotions.
“We sure like sweating around here,” Lanning said. “I have a sense of relief because of the result, but there are certainly a lot of things to fix.”
Sappington’s 25-yard field goal sent the Autzen Stadium crowd into a frenzy as the clock hit zero. But the elation was not so far removed from the boos that showered down on the Ducks’ offense with during the second half as it called three straight runs — the last on third-and-13 — to prompt its sixth of seven punts on the night.
“I hate to say this, but it’s FEBU [f— everybody but us], just focused on ourselves in that moment,” Oregon quarterback Dillon Gabriel said of the booing. “We dug our own hole. We had to get ourselves out of it.”
For the second week in a row, Oregon’s offense looked, at times, discombobulated. It didn’t mean that it still couldn’t show its potential, as Gabriel threw two touchdown passes that traveled 59 and 34 yards, but the offense never appeared to find a rhythm that corresponded with the talent it has and the talent it brought in during the offseason.
“It’s a team that’s finding our identity together,” Gabriel said. “I think you see a bunch of guys being more and more connected as the weeks go on through practice, through games, and then you go through adversity like that and then you find a way to win. … I think you look at the things you can clean up and look how good you can be.”
The big plays saved Oregon from an upset Saturday, especially those that arrived by way of the special teams. In the second half, with the game going back-and-forth, Tez Johnson returned a punt 85 yards for a touchdown while Noah Whittington ran a kickoff 84 yards to the end zone before dropping the ball just before crossing. To Lanning’s relief, running back Jayden Limar instinctively picked up the loose ball in the end zone, averting disaster.
Beyond Gabriel’s two long touchdown tosses, the only other touchdown the Ducks offense scored was a 1-yard run by Gabriel. As a unit, the Oregon attack had only two drives of more than five plays and finished with just 110 yards on the ground, over 100 fewer than the Broncos.
“I don’t think it’s anything preventing [the offense] from having success,” Johnson said. “We’re just shooting ourselves in the foot: offside, false start, illegal formation, illegal motion — those little things we cannot have.”
With an offensive line that, through two games, has rotated plenty, Oregon committed nine penalties — most by that position group — and allowed four sacks. The Ducks also had three fumbles and lost two of them.
Lanning, however, remained adamant that he believes in the strategy to rotate the offensive line often but said Oregon will watch film to see which “five, six or seven guys can play winning football for us.”
Saturday’s last-second victory came one week after Oregon struggled offensively in a 24-14 victory over Idaho — a win that dropped the Ducks four spots to No. 7 overall in the AP Top 25.
For the second Saturday in a row, Oregon emerged unscathed but not unaware of its proximity to disaster. Postgame, the Ducks tried to cling to positivity and praise their resiliency while being unable to ignore the reality of their struggles.
To Lanning’s point, this has been football that has produced wins, but it has not been winning football, especially that befitting of a team with expectations to not just make the College Football Playoff but potentially compete for a title.
“We won, nothing more than a W. Now I’m thinking about what we can go fix,” Lanning said. “We put ourselves in some tough situations, and we were able to come out of it.”
